


to fuck and fight

by likecharity



Category: Skins (UK)
Genre: Drinking, Drug Use, F/M, Fights, Frottage, Hand Jobs, M/M, Masturbation, Misogyny, Morning After, Multi, Promiscuity, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Strippers & Strip Clubs, Substitution, Underage Sex, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-17
Updated: 2010-02-17
Packaged: 2017-11-11 01:42:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/473063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likecharity/pseuds/likecharity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sexuality-based character study. Cook's sexual history, and what happens when it ends up including Freddie. <i> Making people moan and writhe is kind of the only thing he knows how to do.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It's very long!! The timeline starts pre-show and ends just before season 4.

_You want to fuck and fight  
In the basement  
The kid wanna fuck and fight  
In the basement_   
**\- 'Black Rooster' by The Kills**

 

James Cook loses his virginity at the ripe young age of twelve. This is a fact that shocks most people, and one of which he is very proud.

It's actually his cousin who initiates him into the glorious world of sex, but she's like, his fifth cousin twice removed or something and both of them have decided they're as good as strangers. It's the first time they've ever met, anyway, at this god-awful wedding of his uncle's, and she's a year older and therefore _infinitely_ wiser, and they go at it in the cloakroom.

It's actually the most awkward experience he's ever had, because she's clearly incredibly uncomfortable and not the experienced older woman he assumed she was. He'd thought he knew what he was doing, he'd always claimed to be intimately aquainted with what goes on between a girl's legs thanks to stolen magazines and videotapes. But in reality he has _no fucking clue_ , and even though it feels good, that also means it only lasts about five seconds, and he's left feeling pretty dazed and lost and not knowing whether it's always going to be that way or not.

It's okay, though, because afterwards, they nick some of his Dad's cigarettes and a bottle of wine, and go through both while sitting outside the church and laughing together. He apologises for making her bleed and she says it's all right because they'll probably never see each other again anyway. He gives her the finger, and she kisses him sloppily on the mouth.

Besides, afterwards he tells people losing his virginity was the best thing that ever happened to him, and the looks on Freddie and JJ's faces when he relays the story make _everything_ worth it.

**

By the time he's fourteen, he's done it with three girls from school, fingered two, and gotten more handjobs and blowjobs than he can count. 

The older men in his life, anyone who's ever tried to be a mentor to him—father, uncles, slightly dodgy teachers—have always seemed to make such a big _deal_ about sex, like it's what their lives revolve around. It's as though girls determine a man's self-worth, as though if you're not getting laid there's something wrong with you. That's what Cook picks up from it all, anyway.

The girls are the pretty, popular ones, the kind he and Freddie and JJ would never actually hang out with. But it's just so easy to be in the right place at the right time, to be there when one of them wants to make her boyfriend jealous or has just tried vodka for the first time or is feeling the peer pressure that they're always going on about in P.S.E.

It never occurs to him that there's anything about it that's not quite right.

He and JJ are sleeping over at Freddie's one night, in the shed, all bundled up in sleeping bags after trying their first spliff, and _god_ , Cook feels good, all warm and sleepy and safe and like there's this dull, happy haze just drifting through his whole body. He wants this forever, wants things to stay this way. Everything else is unpredictable and dangerous and things are changing all the time at home, but as long as he can come to Freddie's shed and drink something, smoke something, and have company while he sleeps—well, it's all okay.

"Cook?" says Freddie's voice suddenly, quiet and a little hoarse in the dark.

Cook rolls over to face him. "Mm?"

"Did you—did you do it with Natalie last weekend?" Freddie asks, and he sounds kind of far away, kind of distant. Cook can see, in the dim light, that he's staring up at the ceiling as he speaks.

"Nah," Cook says, stretching. He thinks of Natalie, the girl Freddie's had a crush on since Year Five, and remembers how she refused to fuck him and then told everybody he'd tried to force her. "Frigid little bitch," he snorts, voice slightly muffled against his pillow. "She only gave me a handjob. Wasn't even that good at it."

Freddie laughs. "How can you—how could she not be good at it?"

Cook laughs, too, and answers, as honestly as he can. "Just...limp. I dunno, mate," he says, and yawns, and stares at Freddie's profile in the darkness. "She didn't hold my dick tight enough. You know what I mean," he pauses, remembering how Freddie told him he got his first handjob at that same party last week, "don't tell me Ashley was _good_ , mate, because I've been there and done that and I've got the injuries from her fake nails to prove it."

There's a strained silence and then Freddie's voice comes back to him. "She didn't—I didn't do anything with Ashley."

Cook snorts. "Nah," he says, yawning. He feels like he's about to fall asleep. "Nah, you did. You said so."

"I know, I—" Cook can hear Freddie playing with the zipper of his sleeping bag. "I lied, okay?" he mutters. "No one's touched my dick. Ever. All right? You happy now?"

Cook's first instinct is to laugh, and all the weed in his system makes it hard not to. Instead he says, "That's tragic, mate," which probably isn't much better, but it's the first thing that comes to mind.

"JJ hasn't done anything either," Freddie mumbles, rolling over to face him.

"Yeah, but that's _JJ_ ," Cook says pointedly. JJ snores quietly over Freddie's shoulder and the two of them laugh. But then Freddie's statement sinks in, _really_ sinks in, and Cook feels incredibly sorry for him. "You don't even know what it feels like to have someone else's hand round your cock? _Jesus._ "

"No, Cook," says Freddie steadily, sounding more pissed off now, "I don't know what that feels like."

Cook looks at him, looks at the openness in his face and the honesty in his eyes. He says, "Do you want me to show you?" because he knows they can blame it on the spliff later, and because JJ's sound asleep, and because really, it _is_ tragic if Freddie's never felt this.

He can't think about it too clearly. Freddie just sort of shrugs with one shoulder and then shucks his sleeping bag down to around his hips, and Cook can see the bulge beneath the fabric. It's sort of clinical at first, a fast up-and-down movement that mimics the way he gets himself off more than the girls who've done it for him. Freddie's cock is thick and slightly sticky in his hand, pulsing and foreign, but Cook just instinctively knows what to do, knows how to get Freddie squirming on the floor and having to bite down into the pillow to keep himself from waking JJ. 

Making people moan and writhe is kind of the _only_ thing he knows how to do, Cook thinks distantly, as he wipes his hand on Freddie's sleeping bag and gets back into his own. There's something sad about that, something odd, but he doesn't want to think about it, so he shuts his eyes and curls up, listening to JJ's noisy snoring continue on uninterrupted, and Freddie's breathing gradually return to its usual pace.

"Was that okay?" Freddie whispers a moment later.

"Yeah, think so," Cook says. He doesn't want to talk about it. He wants to go to sleep so tomorrow gets here faster. "Just get a girl to do it next time. Give Natalie a go, you've always liked her," he yawns. "She sucks, though."

"She sucks?" Freddie laughs, picking up on the unintended pun.

Cook laughs too, winks at him. "If you're lucky."

There's a pause, and then he hears the intake of breath that means Freddie's about to say something else, but nothing further happens. He rolls over, his back to Freddie, and goes on steadfastly ignoring the stiffy that's threatening to tear the seams of his boxers.

**

He wakes up at around 2pm the next day to see the two of them still passed out on the floor, and he gathers his stuff and leaves, not even sticking around for the fry-up that he knows Mr Mclair usually makes on a Saturday. He doesn't want to hang around eating bacon and beans with Freddie's family.

That night he turns up at a party he's not invited to, and smokes spliff with Natalie until she's all over him. She straddles him, rides him, on the floor of her stepdad's basement, and all he can think about is when Freddie's going to find out.

**

Freddie knows by Monday, through simple word of mouth, and throws punches during Maths before they've even spoken a word to each other since what happened in the shed.

"I don't know why you care, mate, I told you she wasn't good," Cook says when they're sitting outside the head's office with bloody noses and blossoming black eyes.

Freddie stares straight ahead, still fuming. "You told me to give her a go," he says simply.

They both get two weeks' worth of individual detentions and are forced to sit apart for the rest of the year, but time heals their wounds quickly and after Freddie loses his virginity to Natalie less than a month later, they start hanging out together again. 

"I knew you'd make up," JJ beams at them, looking from one to the other in the shed as Freddie rolls a joint and Cook plays with his lighter. "You're never going to fight over a girl again, are you?"

He claps his hands on their backs and Freddie takes the lighter out of Cook's hand. "Right," he says, eyes cast downwards as he sparks the spliff.

"Right," Cook echoes, watching him.

Really, though, he's not sure if it's right. He's never been one to make promises, because there's never been enough in his life that he's sure of. All he knows is that he'll keep being friends with Freddie and JJ, and—

**

—he'll keep having sex.

Between the years of fourteen and seventeen, there are many, many more girls. Mostly, random ones in clubs and at parties whose names he can't remember afterwards. He never sleeps with the same girl twice, but there are a few that he remembers better than others, even if it's more about the circumstances than how good she was.

One of them he meets at a party not long after he and Freddie have reconciled. Freddie goes off to chat up some girl, and he tells Cook he wants him to stick with JJ in case he has a panic attack or something, but then Julie's there, all wide eyes and curly hair and talking a mile a minute, and Cook finds himself oddly charmed by her. She's their age, though she seems a little younger, and even though her constant chattering gets annoying, he decides he wants to get off with her tonight anyway. Maybe it's just because Freddie appears to be making headway with the blonde on the other side of the room, leaning in to her, murmuring something that makes her giggle, and Cook can't _not_ pull tonight if Freddie does.

He takes Julie up to the bathroom, and he asks if she's too drunk, because he's starting to understand that 'taking advantage' is actually a pretty bad thing, but she shakes her head and brightly tells him this is how she's _always_ wanted to pop her cherry. She still won't stop fucking talking even when he's finally got inside of her, and afterwards, she says she feels really, really sick. 

When Freddie finds him, he's half-heartedly holding her hair back as she throws up in the toilet, and he stands in the doorway, eyebrows raised, the blonde girl nowhere in sight.

"Where's JJ?" he says. His voice is steady, but Cook can see the anger flaring up behind his eyes.

"He's not my responsibility, mate," Cook replies, as Julie hurls again into the toilet bowl.

"Well, he's not _mine_ ," Freddie snaps back.

"Aww," Cook says, stroking the back of Julie's head, "whose is he then?"

"Sounds like you have joint custody," Julie chokes out, voice echoing against the porcelain, and Cook tenses up.

Freddie kicks at the doorframe and leaves, disappearing off into the crowd of people in the hallway, and Cook lets go of Julie's hair and leaves her. JJ's more important than some puking girl, and when they find him freaking out in a corner downstairs, they forget about any impending argument and focus on getting him home.

**

Then, of course, there's the girl who stands out because of who she is.

That’s a pretty fucking huge mistake, that one. He's been drinking, as always, but he's still in his right mind, so really he's not got much of an excuse at all. She's drunk too, though he knows he's seen her more so, and he can't say she's the one who starts it because she's not. It's him. It's all him.

It happens at Freddie's house, which makes the connections even harder to shake, though his surroundings are the least of his worries. There's Karen's eyes, all dark and brooding like Freddie's, and her skin, the same smooth pale brown as his, soft and flawless. Even her mouth curves the same way Freddie's does; there's that same gentle dip of the upper lip, and Cook can feel it against his own mouth as he kisses her.

When he fucks her, she's all girlish moans and fake nails digging into his back, but still he fixates on the comparisons, the way she throws back her head like Freddie did when he wanked him off, the way her throat quivers as she gasps. When she squirms and shudders on the sofa beneath him, that night in the shed is so crystal clear in his mind that it's all he's thinking about, even as he comes.

"Don't tell him, all right?" he snaps at her gruffly as he's yanking on his jeans afterwards.

"I'm not retarded," she replies with a roll of her eyes, already dressed and smoothing down her hair.

Freddie comes home less than a minute later, in a mood about something, slamming the door. Cook turns on the TV, Freddie's none the wiser, and their friendship continues unhindered for a surprisingly long time.

**

And then, they meet Effy.

**

Effy's hot, and Cook can tell just by giving her a quick once-over that, no matter how unobtainable she tries to pretend she is, she's easy. He's learnt to recognise that, and it's something beyond the dress that flashes her arse and the way she swings her hips. There's something in her eyes, the way she looks at Freddie—it tells Cook more than she knows, more than he expects.

Anyway, turns out she _is_ easy. Like, _really_ easy. Like all you have to do is fill out some piece-of-piss form and she'll get with you in an out-of-use classroom.

The things on the list are, admittedly, a bit more than he was expecting to take on during his first day at college, but when he gives her a second glance, he's got this feeling she's going to be worth it. So he downs some vodka and sniffs some glue. He looks at some loser's abandoned porn and he sets a few things on fire.

And then, yeah, victory. He shares a spliff with her and practically fucks her through a desk.

All in a day's work, he thinks afterwards, proudly, as he heads to the pub with Freddie and JJ.

**

So then there's that girl Kayleigh who gives him, you know, _the look_ , and if all he has to do to get her is score a bit more coke, that's really not a bad deal.

Freddie gets all uptight about it, but that's nothing new. If he had a quid for every time Freddie got all uptight about him wanting to get it on with some girl, well, he'd be a fucking _millionaire_ by now.

Things don't go according to plan, anyway.

Freddie finds out what happened with Effy and he acts like such a bloody _girl_ about it, like he's entitled to know about each and every one of Cook's dalliances, even though most of the time he gives the impression he'd rather hear about _anything else_ than who was in Cook's bed last night. Cook knows Freddie likes Effy, but it's not like that makes much of a difference. He's already shagged her, so anyone else can do what they like about it. He's pretty sure she'll be making the rounds of the group just as quickly as _he's_ planning to. 

He doesn't get so much as a tiny glance of Kayleigh's tits, which is just fucking ridiculous, and then Freddie starts drunkenly yelling at him and storms off, so he drags JJ to that secret little place where he knows there'll be someone to get him off. 

That's all he needs, right now, anyway. Just a girl's _something_ around his cock, even if all he can afford is a pair of hands. Whatever.

He just—yeah, he just needs _something_.

**

Effy's brilliant in bed, she really is. A top dollar shag, as he told Freddie and JJ. He didn't think she'd be up for another go but she is, many more in fact, and he finds himself getting naked with her more than he has with anybody else. 

It's fun, until something sort of snaps and she's not quite looking him in the eye anymore, and he catches her giving Freddie these longing glances all the time. She starts breaking away from him, seeming more and more detached every time they fuck, like he might as well be her fucking dildo or something. It's not okay.

He wants someone to appreciate him, maybe, just because sometimes a pair of hands, or a mouth, or a cunt, or an arse—they just aren't _enough_. It makes him feel pathetically sentimental, because he's not like that really—he doesn't like Effy, _like_ -like her, like Freddie seems to. He doesn't feel the same way most people do when they're fucking, there's never any connection there beyond the physical one. He doesn't feel open or exposed or like he's sharing something real or honest or raw. It's just fun, and it feels _necessary_ somehow. It's like an integral part of him, but, he supposes, that makes him just as detached from it all as Effy is.

And right now he's bored of the same old moans and groans coming from Effy's tobacco-tasting mouth, and the way she wraps her legs round him like she's done it to a million others.

So he fucks Pandora, because she's naïve and upset and really _willing to learn_ , excited about 'surfing and turfing' or whatever she calls it. She's sweet, and so in awe of the new feelings, and it makes a nice change.

Still, it doesn't stop him going out to some club the next night and getting absolutely plastered, ending up getting a blowjob from some twenty-something in the toilets. She's too practised, too perfect at it, it's almost _boring_ , and she leaves grotesque rings of waxy red lipstick around his dick.

**

Effy's got her thong all in a twist over that thing with Pandora, and refuses to fuck him again. He doesn't understand, like, at _all_ , because he really had no idea they were supposed to be exclusive and he'd pretty much assumed she was shagging other people on the side too. Maybe it's a girly best friends loyalty thing, he doesn't know.

When Freddie finds out about Karen, at first he doesn't think it's that much of a big deal. Freddie knows what he's like, after all, and even though he was smart enough to know he should keep it secret, he never thought Freddie'd blow up like this if he found out.

When he gets everyone to vote for that Honey chick in the Sexxbombs competition instead of Karen, he tells himself he's doing Freddie a favour, doing _everyone_ a fucking favour and making people happy. He thinks of all the times Freddie ranted about how disrespectful Karen was being, whoring herself out on television and looking into the camera with welled-up eyes afterwards and saying shit like _I'm doing this for you, Mum._ He tells himself Freddie'll be glad if Karen loses.

Deep down, though, he knows he's just doing it because if nothing happens, Freddie's going to keep on ignoring him, and he's not going to let Freddie make _that_ much of a fuss over Cook having one night of passion with a girl Freddie already _knows_ is a bit of a slut. 

So yeah, he makes Karen lose.

And then Freddie lunges at him and Cook eggs him on until he feels the sharp crack of Freddie's forehead hitting his own. And then he knows it's all going to be okay, because even if they're fighting, Freddie's still _here_ , in his life, and he'll pretty much do anything to keep it that way.

It's not really a part of the plan to _kiss_ him, he just wants some way of communicating this whole thing to his best friend so that Freddie knows they're not _really_ in a row, and, well, it's the only real type of communication he _knows_. 

He just wants to say "I fuckin' love you," like he has many times before, but then the words turn into _feelings_ and before he can stop them, they're boiling over and he's grabbing Freddie by the face and pressing their mouths together, hard. He tries to recover by saying the words afterwards, throws in an insult, but the look on Freddie's face is scaring him. He pushes Freddie's head to the side, partly just to stop himself looking at him, and heads for the hallway. He needs to get out of here and he needs someone to come with him.

"JJ, we're leaving," he says, and he hears how unsteady his voice is, how it wavers, and _fuck_ he needs to get out of here.

Out in the hallway, he can hear Freddie saying something to JJ and, impatient, blood thrumming through his veins and his heart threatening to pound out of his chest, he yells JJ's name and punches that fucking cheesy family photo the Mclairs have had on their wall ever since Freddie's Mum died, shattering the glass in its frame.

He's still with JJ, and halfway to JJ's house, when he changes his mind and goes in the other direction instead.

Effy looks kind of drained and weary when he gets there, and her breath smells like she's been drinking vodka with her dinner, but he doesn't care, because she's _willing_ and right now that's all that fucking matters.

She leads him up to her room and they fuck, still mostly-clothed, on her bed even though her Mum's right downstairs.

The doorbell rings only seconds after they're done and she sits up and goes stock-still, listening out as her Mum answers the door and shushing him when he tries to ask her what's up. Her Mum's response tells them both who's dropped by and she slides out of bed the second they hear the door shut again.

Cook looks at her, silhouetted against the window, and heaves a sigh, going up to join her. Of course Freddie's there, looking up at them, wistful and pathetic and _fuck_ , Cook doesn't understand why he hasn't managed to at least kiss her yet if he's so head over heels. He doesn't peg Effy at the type who plays hard to get. He looks down at Freddie on the pavement, opens the curtains wider to give him a better look.

It's like swinging the votes in the competition. It's a way to keep Freddie there. If Freddie loves Effy as much as he seems to, he's not going to give up on her, and as long as Cook keeps himself between the two of them—well, Freddie won't give up on _him_ either.

He grins at Freddie's stunned face, smoothes his hand down Effy's arm and kisses her ear. She's motionless, but when he nudges his erection against her thigh and says, "Another go then, yeah?" she nods, and he fucks her slowly up against the cool glass of the window, watching Freddie retreating all the way down the road back home.

**

The thing is, Effy's not really a _challenge_ anymore, and he could do with one of those because everything else is getting boring. He fucks another nameless girl in a club, goes back for another handjob from that Welsh whore, and has sex with Effy countless times, but it's just—he needs something that's going to make him _prove_ himself. Anyone can get laid at a club full of drunken ravers, anyone can pay a prostitute to wank them off, and anyone—barring Freddie, apparently—can fuck Effy. 

He wants something that has more to it, so he picks Naomi, mainly because he figures that if she rejects him, she'll at least look hilariously pissed off and offended while doing so.

She makes some weird analogy about her lady parts and cement that he doesn't quite get, and then says something that sounds an awful lot like she's promising to fuck him if he manages to get elected student president.

So he signs up.

Because there's really nothing better to do, and he likes to think about whether he can make her let her hair down and break her composure.

And he wins the election.

Because you can never underestimate the desire teenagers have for anarchy, and you can never expect them to really _care_ about the way their school's run.

Turns out, though, that Naomi's not like those lesbians you see in porn, the ones who are all about flicking their tongues against each other up until the bloke with the big dick enters the room. No, she's one of those _actual_ lesbians, or at least she's pretty serious about this thing with Emily, because she stops him, and steps back. 

And then she tries to tell him he's nice, so he says "Fuck you," and she says "Fuck you right back," only still, they don’t.

But it's okay. He's not interested in trying to convince her, and he's not even that interested full stop.

He wanted a challenge, and more than that he just wanted to feel a girl's warm soft breasts under his hands, and he wanted to sink into the wet heat between a girl's thighs, and he wanted to smell perfume and fiddle with bra clasps and slip his hand into lacy knickers.

He'd even settle for smeared lipstick on his dick, right now, or Karen's manicured nails scraping against his back, and his fingers itch at the thought. JJ's talked to him about sex addictions before, about people who literally can't do anything with their lives but fuck, and Cook'd just scoffed at him.

"That's just an excuse, mate," he'd said, blowing smoke in JJ's face. "Those people are _living their lives_ , man, they're fuckin' doing it right."

He tries to imagine himself sitting opposite some bespectacled psychiatrist at JJ's loony bin or wherever, tries to imagine himself recounting all his sexual escapades in explicit detail. He'd probably shock the old bird.

Probably end up fucking her on her desk.

**

He fucks Pandora that evening. He invites her round and she turns up right away, but she sort of hovers in the hallway, saying stuff like "Actually Cookie, I don't know if I should, I mean, Thomas is back, and—" until he kisses her to shut her up, and then she's like putty in his hands.

It's easy. _God,_ it's so easy.

**

He's not so dumb that he doesn't know it's wrong. He knows it's got to be kept secret, but in a way, that's kind of exciting. It's new. They have sex all the time now, and maybe it's that excitement of it being secret that keeps him from getting bored. He likes how she has to sneak out to his room, slip away from Thomas in order to see him.

One day, JJ nearly finds out, or he thinks he does. He turns up only seconds after Panda's left and he's all twitchy and shifty and actually flips out and _yells_ at Cook, leaving Cook to try and calm him down. It's a close call. And Cook wants to tell him, he really does, but—he doesn't know what would happen if he did.

So then they go out, and JJ gives him some of his own personal stash of crazy pills, and god, okay, Cook's never felt quite like this when he's been fucked up before—it's a different feeling, a totally different feeling, not necessarily good but a hell of a lot of fun nonetheless. Emily's dancing with him, and he doesn't even care if she's a lesbian, she's hot and fluid and buzzed against him, her arse against his crotch, her tits beneath his hands. He wonders if she'll be up for a shag tonight, wonders if she's the same type of lesbo as Naomi or if she'll be up for a bit of—

And then Katie's dragging her away from him, and he briefly considers a threesome, but ends up getting the shit kicked out of him by some gang of guys instead.

It doesn't hurt, somehow. It's just fists flying at his face, and even as he can feel the blood trickling from his nose, it doesn't hurt. It's just there, this weird distant throbbing that feels like it belongs to somebody else. All he knows is he has to keep moving, let the beat of the music do whatever it wants to his body, even as he's thrashing, crashing into the people around him.

There's flashing red lights, streaming into a bright blue, and then there's a hand in his hair and a body wrapped around him and he clutches at it, fingers grabbing and holding on tightly.

And then he's slumped against a wall and Freddie's trying to feed him fucking water or something and slapping his face and swearing, and JJ's face comes into focus too and all he can do is just fucking laugh.

"Top pills, man," he grins, feeling the way his head rests against the wall behind. 

He's half-aware of Freddie standing up, like he's going to leave, and Effy's the first thing to come to mind so he starts talking about her, rambling, not even knowing what he's saying. 

He says, "She loves you," and Freddie stops still, and turns around. It works.

It all seems so fucking clear now, crystal, blindingly obvious. He doesn't even know how Freddie can't see it himself. He explains, it makes perfect sense—but Freddie's still staring at him like he's spouting nonsense, and he can't make it any fucking clearer than it is. He thinks about Effy and how unresponsive she's been lately and how she looks at Freddie that way. He's not jealous, he doesn't want her to look at him like that. But something about it pisses him off anyway.

"It's hurting me," he hears himself saying, and, well, what the _fuck_ , "'cause Cook needs the love too."

The words are coming out of his mouth anyway like JJ's pills are a fucking truth serum and he can't stop talking. He doesn't _want_ the complications of being with Effy, it's too much, it's not worth it. Pandora's easy. It's easy to keep secrets.

"It's all the same, great tits Panda, great tits Effy, that's all I get, 'cause I'm _shit_." The words are just spilling out now, and it feels like some fucking revelation to him but he can't even see the people around him, can't see if they care. "I'm pure _shit_."

There's a flurry of motion; someone calls him a cunt. 

All he can do is laugh.

The world goes in and out of focus around him and he can feel the wall hard and sturdy against his skull, against his spine. He can feel bass inside him, in his muscles. He hears female voices and his surroundings shut down, black seeping into his vision, his head dropping.

Top pills, JJ, he thinks as he passes out. Top _fucking_ pills.

**

They leave.

He sees Effy briefly, her pale face hovering over him, skin coloured red and blue under the lights.

"I'm sorry, Cook," she says. "I'm not—it's not my fucking responsibilty, all right? You're not _mine._ "

He agrees wholeheartedly, so it's no wonder she walks away, stomping off through the crowd with Naomi tailing after, rolling her eyes. 

That's all girls do, really, he supposes. Leave. Fucking roll their eyes at him. He's good for a fuck when they're trying to distract themselves, when they want something easy, quick and painless. And after that, they're out.

He cares about the principle, not the people. He doesn't want Naomi heaving him off the floor and taking him home with her. Doesn't want Effy crouching beside him, wiping his sweaty brow and professing her love. He doesn't care about them. It goes both ways.

But there's something about them that he can recognise is different. The way Naomi stopped him, even when it would've just been a quick meaningless shag, all because she feels so strongly about Emily. The way Effy's just not _all there_ because of her feelings for Freddie.

He manages to drag himself through the club, anyway, dazed and dizzy after who knows how long. He can't find any of the others. Someone thrusts a drink at him, someone else offers him coke when he stumbles his way to the bathroom, and he takes it, takes it all, because he doesn't know what else he's supposed to do. 

He dances, shoves his hand down the trousers of some girl who's got a boyfriend but doesn't act like it until he's there, beside her, yelling and throwing punches until Cook's black and blue and lying on a cold damp pavement outside.

**

And yeah, that's how he finds himself chucking gravel at Freddie's bedroom window at nearly three in the morning. 

He knows he shouldn't expect a response, but when the curtains are dragged aside and he sees Freddie looking down at him, clad only in the boxers he sleeps in and Cook can see the slight sheen of sweat over his skinny chest, he's not surprised. Not at all.

"I need someone to fuck," he coughs out, shaking his head, when Freddie lets him in.

Freddie laughs. "You don't want to fuck me," he says, and it's—well, it's one of those things that comes out as a joke, a half-arsed comment that's not properly thought through, but then it hangs in the air, considered on both sides, and changes. Ends up differently than it was intended.

"I just want—" Cook says, mostly to fill the silence, because he doesn't know what the hell else to say. Doesn’t know what he wants in the first place. "I just—fucking—I don't fucking know."

He throws himself down on Freddie's bed, feels the mattress sink down under his weight, feels the feather duvet, the smooth soft cotton.

"What're you on?" Freddie asks him, perching on the edge of the bed beside him.

"What? I don't—" Cook says, then laughs. He doesn't even know why. "I need—no, man, I'm serious, I need to fuck—I need to fuck someone—have you got—I need to fuck a girl."

Freddie laughs, too, but it's sort of hollow. "I don't have any girls here, Cook."

"Katie not hiding in your wardrobe?"

Freddie tenses up slighly beside him. "You heard about that?"

"Yeah," Cook chuckles, "nice one, man. I never even gave her a go. Should've."

"You gave everyone _else_ a go," Freddie retorts. "Maybe you should go find Effy," he sneers after a moment, "I'm sure she'd be up for a quick shag. Seeing as you really _need_ it."

" _Fuck_ Effy, man," Cook says, rolling the words round his tongue. He tilts his head so it's on its side, and looks at Freddie, follows his long skinny torso up to his neck (remembers the way it looked all stretched and long as he brought him off, so long ago), up to his face. Freddie's staring straight ahead, at the wall.

"Never really gave me a chance to, did you," Freddie spits out, bitter, and Cook snorts.

"Good thing, too," he says. "Fucking...she's just not...you know." He's mumbling into the duvet now; tired, drunk, useless. "Not worth it, really. Shit."

"Not worth it?" Freddie looks practically scandalised at the thought. Like Effy's worth ten times as much as Cook is. "Fuck. Go home. Sleep in your own fucking bed."

Cook rolls over, feels the cool soft sheets against his cheek. He inhales, and he can smell Freddie; the soap-shampoo-spliff smell of him he's so used to, the comfortable warmth of the sheets his best friend's just been curled up under. He shuffles along the bed until his head meets a pillow, and he settles against it. It feels good. He inhales again. It feels _so_ good.

"Maybe I wanna sleep here," he mumbles into the fabric.

"Fuck you. Go home."

Cook lets the words ring out in the air. He feels like he can feel the vibration of them around the room, can feel the way they leave Freddie's lips and enter his ears. He listens.

"She's—fuck—we shouldn't," he says eventually, because they're the only words that come to mind and some part of him thinks Freddie will understand, thinks Freddie'll get every single thought that's come into his head since he entered the room, just through those few words. _God_ , Jesus fuck, he's so tired.

"Shouldn't _what_ , Cook, Christ," Freddie snaps back at him, impatient.

"Shouldn't let her get in the fucking way," Cook replies, words coming back practically garbled, "shouldn't—fucking—we're, we're mates, all right? We've always been mates." He pauses. "Always gonna be mates. She's just some fucking—she's just some fucking psycho whore." He pauses again, turns to look at Freddie, but Freddie's still staring at the wall. "You know that. You do. You know it. She's fucking _mental_ , mate, I don't know why you bother."

"Same reason you do," Freddie retorts, shrugging with one shoulder.

"What, 'cause she's easy? There?" Cook laughs again, but the laugh tears itself out of his lungs and leaves him breathless and uneasy. "'Cause she's fucking up for it and 'cause she's got a fucking pussy?" He presses his face into Freddie's duvet for a minute, letting the scent overtake his nostrils, letting the material cover his nose and mouth. "That's why I fucking fuck her. And 'cause you want her. You fucking—you want her. You've never wanted anyone like this. Never seen you like this."

Cook practically muffles his own mouth against the bed like he's trying to get himself to shut up, and he presses against the pillow. The room's kind of spinning around him and he finds it oddly comforting; he doesn't want anything to stay still or to stop.

"Go to sleep, Cook," Freddie tells him after a careful minute, and Cook's already halfway there, drifting off, the room losing focus around him.

"Fucking...fucking. Jesus. Fucking twat," is the last thing he hears, Freddie muttering under his breath as he pulls the duvet over himself, settling down into bed beside him.

**

Cook wakes up briefly at some ungodly hour, feeling far too hot. He yanks off all his clothes but his boxers, hardly bothering to open his eyes, only catching sight of the sun coming up through a crack in curtains. He snuggles down under the duvet, cool and comfortable now. Beside him, he senses warmth and presence, and he reaches out to feel hot soft skin against his fingertips. He strokes, feels steady breathing, and curves his hand around a waist.

He falls back to sleep almost instantly.

**

It takes him a long time to wake up properly, several hours later. When he does, he feels like his head's exploding, and he groans into the pillow beneath his head, squinting at the sunlight streaming in through the windows. He's disoriented, sick and sore, and he stretches, reaching out for whoever's next to him. 

But there's no one.

There's rarely no one.

He sits up straight, blinking, clutching at his aching head.

"Go home," a voice spits from across the room, and a balled-up pair of jeans hit him square in the chest.

It's Freddie, and it's only then that Cook realises where he is. He hasn't slept in Freddie's room for years, not since they were maybe ten or eleven. The shed became their home after that, and he's always slept on the sofas in there, or with his limbs slung haphazardly over an armchair, or just splayed out on the floor. Used to sleep top-to-toe with Freddie in this bed, he remembers, usually with JJ on the floor beside them.

He looks around.

"I haven't slept here for fuckin' _ages_ , man," he says, just because it feels like the sort of thing that should be said out loud. His voice comes out all scratchy and his throat feels like it's clogged with cotton wool. He can't remember last night at all. At _all._ That's unusual, too. It must've been pretty fucking good.

"Yeah, and you won't be again any time soon," Freddie snaps back, chucks a t-shirt across the room at him.

Cook glances down at it, sees that it's stained with beer and blood and fuck knows what else. "What?" is all he can muster.

Freddie sinks his head into his hand and pinches the bridge of his nose. It's some signal that he's exasperated; Cook knows it well. Even if he doesn't understand it.

"What? What'd I do last night?" Cook laughs. "C'mon mate, it can't have been that bad. Remind me and we can both have a little chuckle and then get some breakfast—oh, shit, I would fucking _murder_ a fry-up right now, _fuck_ that sounds good, does your Dad still—"

"I'm serious, Cook, get out."

"What?" Cook holds out his hands, palms upturned, clueless. "What, did I try and fuckin', touch you up, or something, because—"

"No," Freddie snorts, " _Jesus._ Just fuck off."

And Cook does, because whatever, he's not hanging around where he's not wanted, and he doesn't need to be there in the first place. He's got other places to go, people to see. He makes a big show of getting dressed, taking his time, drawing out the awkward silence they lapse into as Freddie just sits and waits and Cook pulls his sweaty, dirty clothes on.

**

He washes crusty dried blood off his face with blisteringly hot water, changes his clothes, and eats three Pot Noodles, but he still doesn't feel any better.

That night he finds himself outside Freddie's again, throwing stones until his arm's too sore, and Freddie doesn't answer.

**

He buys a whole fucking dinner-for-two at Marks & Spencers, blows all the money he's got, only to be turned away by Effy's Mum, told everyone's gone off for some party in the woods. He assumes that the fact his invitation got lost in the post is Freddie's doing—whatever Effy may think of him now, he knows she still wants him around. Everyone always wants him around.

He doesn't even know why he spent so much on her, made an honest-to-God effort, like he never has before. At some point, this has become more than just a fuck. It means more to him, being with her. But not Effy herself—she's as meaningless to him as she was when he first laid eyes on her.

Later, running through the wet black woods as fast as his feet can carry him, the bright blaze of a campfire his target, something begins to dawn on him.

He's got something to prove.

He just doesn't know _what._

**

He fucks everything up, because that's all he knows. He scares the shit out of all of them, partly for revenge and partly for pure amusement. And Freddie goes mental, fingers tight at the collar of Cook's shirt, face so close Cook can feel the cold sweat of his nose against his own. Yet still, he doesn't hit him, doesn't headbutt him, doesn't kick him in the balls—nothing. And Cook feels himself longing for it, aching for it, for _something_. Something's swelling in his gut, anticipation tying his stomach into angry, impatient knots.

"What d'you want, my fuckin' blood?" he snarls. Freddie's eyes are too close to his own for him to see any change in expression. "'Cause you've fucking taken everything else, you've taken fucking JJ and now you're taking her off me as well."

That, that's when he sees a reaction. Freddie's eyes dart to Effy and then back to him, and Cook grins. Even when he gets Effy to tell the truth—hears her say she doesn't want him, not anymore—he wants to smile. He wants _everyone_ to know about all the shit that's been going on, so he talks, and talks, and keeps talking, even when they're all sneering in his face for him to go home or storming off into the trees or just begging him, _begging_ him to shut up.

Thomas should be the one to hurt him, really, but he won't. It's Panda, with a slap harder than he expects, that brings the sweet sting of blood from his nose and the burning pain to the surface of his skin.

It's not Freddie's knuckles connecting sharply with the bridge of his nose, but—it's enough.

He laughs, relief spreading warmth right through him.

**

Effy runs off into the dark, tripping, seeing shapes and shadows and bugs that aren't there. Cook doesn't know where everyone else has gone but he can hear the sounds of argument in the trees that crowd him.

"You happy now?" Freddie snaps, dropping onto his knees with a crackle of leaves. "Now you've ruined everybody's fucking night?"

"Not yours," Cook grins, wiping blood from his face with the heel of his hand, "you've got everything you want, right? Effy wants you."

In the dim light Cook can see Freddie clench his teeth. A moment passes.

"So what're we doing here? Toasting marshmallows, singing songs round the fire?" he taunts. 

His face is still throbbing painfully. Freddie doesn't answer. He glances round to look at him, and then before he knows what's happening he's being pushed down onto the ground, Freddie straddling him, a hot heavy weight at his hips. He's half-wrestling him, clutching at his shoulders and his waist, fingers briefly grabbing at his throat. Cook can tell he's on something—has always been able to tell when Freddie's on something, interpret the extra twitches and shudders of his body, and he knows this time it's a hallucinogen, acid or shrooms, maybe.

He doesn't fight back, just lies there, feeling the crunch and shift of the leaves beneath him, waiting for the injury, his whole body thrumming with impatience. Freddie's lips are pressed tightly together, his eyes fierce, his fingers grabbing and snatching but never doing any harm.

"Would you fucking _hit_ me, you—"

His words are cut off by Freddie's lips being smashed against his own, open and dry, panting into his mouth. It's hard and sudden and _painful_ , feeling like a bruise, and he can taste his own blood and something foul on Freddie's breath. Freddie goes still, a dead weight, and then grips Cook's shoulders so tightly it hurts like hell and thrusts his tongue into his mouth. Cook's whole body tenses and jerks and Freddie snaps back and hauls himself off him. Cook only catches a glimpse of his face—lit eerily grey by the moonlight, a smear of Cook's blood and his own spit across his left cheek—and then he's vanishing, his silhouette merging with those of the surrounding trees as Cook lies stunned and sore in the mud.

He doesn't know how long he stays there, trying to think but hitting mental blocks everywhere his mind goes. Eventually he gets shakily to his feet, grabs a torch off the ground and stumbles off the way he came.

**

"Nine fucking stitches," Freddie hisses out, long harsh plumes of spliff smoke streaming from his nostrils and lips.

"I told you she was mental, mate," Cook shrugs.

It's a genuine response, no cover-ups, because he's honestly not surprised, not even a little. He never doubted that Effy could do damage, split a bitch's head open if she needed to. It's no shock. All that surprises him is Freddie's disbelief, disappointment, like all this time Effy's been an angel to him.

And, of course, the fact that Freddie's here at all, turning up at his door ranting and raving about the party and hospitals and the police, and acting like they're still friends. 

"Didn't think you meant," Freddie pauses, inhales from the spliff sharply, "like this."

"What, you love Katie then?" Cook asks, laughing. "That why you're so heartbroken? She's gonna get better. It's like a fucking papercut, nine stitches is nothing, mate."

"Shut up."

Freddie's pacing, back and forth across the narrow room, from one wall to the other. Cook watches him from where he's slumped on his bed.

"Didn't think she was—I guess I just didn't think she was capable," Freddie says, and his voice is low, sad, _pathetic_. Slighted. It's the same tone Cook hears when Freddie finds out he's been drinking from dusk til dawn, the same tone he hears when he takes pills without asking what they are first or gets caught nicking vodka from the corner shop.

"You don't even fucking know her, man," Cook bursts out, his own anger and frustration surprising him. "'Course you don't know what she's capable of. I still don't know why you fucking bother."

Freddie swears, the dying spliff burning his fingers. He tosses it into the bin. "I'm not the only one who fucking bothers, all right?" he spits onto the carpet, and Cook sits up straight. The blood flows heavier through his veins, he's ready for something. "We both—we both care about her, yeah?"

Cook snorts. Maybe he cares about Effy more than he does about other girls, but in the grand scheme of things, he really doesn't give a shit—doesn't get all weepy when she's wanting someone else, doesn't get all high and mighty when she knocks somebody out. 

Freddie doesn't seem to care about his answer, anyway. He runs his hand through his hair, aggravated, and Cook watches him. Freddie's fingers are electric, moving constantly. He reaches into his pocket, fumbling for another spliff, finds the tin empty, and swears again. The cogs start to turn and something clicks in Cook's brain.

"You fucked her," Cook says.

"What?"

"Effy. You fucked her."

Freddie doesn't respond, and Cook knows, just _knows_. He feels a stab of anger in his chest and stands up.

"You did. You fucked her. Say it."

Freddie's still fidgeting, one hand reaching for his pocket and the other one pulling at the hem of his t-shirt and Cook grabs both of them, frustrated. His eyes flicker upwards and the kiss comes immediately.

Their mouths meet harshly, painfully, lips forced against each other and falling open. Their teeth clash, and Freddie bites, hard and sharp, and Cook jolts, thrusting his tongue into Freddie's mouth. And then Freddie goes limp against him, passive and helpless, openly sobbing, his cheeks hot against Cook's skin. When Cook pulls back, pushing Freddie away, he sees the tears pricking at the corners of Freddie's reddened eyes and he pushes him harder, watches his back hit the wall. He hasn't seen Freddie cry since his Mum died.

"I'm going to the hospital," Freddie says hoarsely, looking at the floor, wiping angrily at his lips with the back of his hand. "Katie—she needs me."

Cook laughs, hard and cruel and hysterical. "Right," he grins. "I'm sure she fucking does."

Freddie clenches his fists and sets his jaw and comes so close Cook can once again smell the weed on his heavy breath, but nothing comes, no hit, no kiss, just a quick retreat and the loud slam of the door.

**

Minutes later, Cook finds himself achingly hard, and he wanks off to the nastiest porn he can find, eyes fixed on the tanned blonde bimbo with her fake tits and fake moans. He feels sick as he comes, tasting bile in his throat. 

He tries the doors of six cars parked nearby before he finds one unlocked, and he follows Freddie to the hospital. He asks for Katie Fitch, and finds Effy in a sobbing heap on the floor outside the room. He carries her limp body outside, shouting away offers of help, tucks her into the back seat, and starts to drive.

She cries brokenly for a little while longer and then falls asleep. Cook's mapless, finding motorways by mistake and spiralling round roundabouts, but he plans his route the best he can.

_Sometimes,_ he thinks, lighting a cigarette, _there's nothing left to do but run away._


	2. Chapter 2

It's funny, really, how fast feelings change. He never thought he was that fussed about having feelings in the first place, and now, all of a sudden, it seems like they're everywhere, pummeling his head and his heart til he's doing stupid shit all the fucking time. There's so many that he can't link each one directly to an event even if he could be arsed, so he doesn't try figure them out, doesn't dare beat them. He just lets them win.

It's when he wakes up beside her after a series of the best nights he's ever had, that he finally considers the idea that he might love her. She wakes him up by prodding his morning boner and calling him 'slugger', and he opens his eyes to her pretty, mascara-smeared face, cigarette-tinged morning breath and messy, unwashed braids. And maybe he's still half-asleep, and in that weird state between still-drunk and hungover, but he starts to seriously wonder if she could be some kind of extension of himself. Like he has a long-lost twin, or he's some nutter with an imaginary friend, like Russell Crowe in that one movie. 

He looks out at the dock they've woken up by, its poorly-kept ships and the overcast morning sky, and everything seems perfect in that beautiful, fucked-up way. They've been wearing the same clothes for a fortnight at least, been pretty much homeless, but none of it's mattered because they're together. It's like being with himself, only better. She knows what he wants and when he wants it, because she feels the same way. And it's fucking amazing.

It starts as a little inkling, and turns into an assumption. All these feelings are like what people describe love as. He can imagine living with her, even fucking marrying her, 'cause it's all so easy, so natural and comfortable. The way he's been feeling and acting lately are easily explained away by love. And it's weird, in retrospect, how quickly this assumption turns into an ardent belief. Something he clings to, something he's so willing to fight for.

It's not long since that morning, now, that he sits on the boat with the whole thing in tatters, the fucked-up beauty turned into something simply fucked-up. Effy's chosen Freddie (no words spoken, but her eyes said it all), and then Freddie fucked her, and now he's standing here asking for permission to do it again, and again, and to love her on top of it all. And he just can't say yes, can't give them his blessing or whatever the fuck they want. The _idea_ of them together makes him sick to his stomach, makes him feel rotten to the core, makes him want to fuck shit up til it kills him. 

All of that _must_ be love. It _must_ be.

Later, on the boat, they crack open some beers, still high on the success of their getaway. Cook's Dad has been thrown overboard and Cook and Freddie have shared an impulsive hug, but the excitement of the atmosphere is dying down slowly. Freddie pats the space beside him in invitation, and Cook takes his place there. They clink cans and everyone but him smiles. He can sense that it's a significant moment, and he wants to believe it's some silent agreement to put all this shit behind them; to forget love and let friendship reign.

But he looks at Effy, and her smile fades, and she looks worn-out and wracked with guilt and pity, and his heart sinks to the pit of his stomach. He aches there more than anywhere else, pain worse than the bruises all over his face and body. He can't stand it, and so he looks at Freddie instead, notices the contrast between the two. He appreciates the familiarity of Freddie's face for a moment, the skin clean and fresh, the optimistic expression when he shrugs and says, "So. What do we do now?"

It makes Cook feel like there's hope, after all. Somewhere, buried deep in all of this, there's hope.

**

They spend a little while away from each other when they get back home, rehabilitating. At least, he assumes that's the deal. That's what JJ tells him. That they're all going to take a little time apart before they all decide what the fuck they're going to do about this situation. But then, one evening, Cook meets up with everyone to be told Effy's buggered off somewhere and no one's heard from her for a good couple of weeks.

So that's that.

He forgets about her, to be honest. Not entirely, but not having her around makes things better, easier to cope with. Things with Freddie and JJ start being a little bit more normal again, and he doesn't feel quite so frantic anymore, doesn't feel like there's something inside him scratching to get out.

Still, Freddie's pretty torn up, and JJ too, and it doesn't seem to be solved by night after night at strip clubs, so Cook's not sure what to do. That tugging in his heart is back when he sees the look on Freddie's face, 'cause it looks like how he feels, that sick and rotten feeling deep inside like your heart's going bad 'cause there's no one to tend to it. And as much as he hates the fact that Freddie wants Effy, misses Effy, that these feelings are _caused_ by Effy, he still feels sorry for him.

One night, he notices that Freddie starts to cheer up a bit after a lapdance from a girl who kind of looks like how Effy might appear if she started doing meth and lost every last bit of her self-respect. Maybe it's 'cause the girl has Effy's wavy brown hair and piercing cat-like blue eyes and aloof attitude, but Cook can't stand Freddie looking at her like that. It makes him feel like he's got to have her, even if it's just to take her away from him.

So when Freddie and JJ stumble out for a kebab when the club closes, Cook sticks around, asks her her name.

"Cherry, love," the girl says disinterestedly, lighting a cigarette and heading into the back to change.

"Cherry, eh? That's original," Cook replies, following her, ignoring the big guy at the door who half-heartedly attempts to stop him. "Been to a strip club every night this week and not met a Cherry yet."

Actually, they've met exactly six, but he lies 'cause he's drunk enough to think it'll help him get into her pants.

"Well, great," she says, unclasping her bra and shoving it into a locker. "If only originality was what you guys got off on, then maybe I'd earn more."

"Come on, put on a bit of a show," Cook taunts, gesturing to the crumpled up bra and doing a bit of gyrating to give her the hint. "Like before, yeah?"

"I'm off-duty, love," she says, laughing out cigarette smoke as she lifts one leg up onto the bench between them. She unzips the thigh-high PVC boot that covers it.

"You're taking your clothes off," Cook shrugs. He jokes, lamely, losing sight of his aim. "Looks like work to me."

She stands up straight again, boot unzipped with all the fabric of it pooling awkwardly around her foot. She crosses her arms against her bare chest. "What do you want?"

"My friend thinks you're hot," Cook says, stepping up on the bench and then hopping down on the other side, coming closer to her.

She laughs, takes another drag of her cigarette. "What are we, teenagers?"

"Sure." Cook comes even closer, daringly slides a hand around her waist. With her stripper heels on, he only comes up to her chest, but that's fine by him. His lips brush against her skin as he says, "sure, teenagers. Reckless, horny teenagers. Whatever gets you off, love."

Her breath seems to hitch. "I'm a stripper, not a hooker."

He pulls back, looking her in the eye and speaking without thinking. "Good, 'cause I'm not planning on paying you."

"You're a charmer," she snorts.

"Pride myself on it," he says before stretching up to kiss her. He feels her sigh before she starts to kiss back, and he says, "'sides, hookers don't tend to kiss their clients."

As he fucks her against the lockers, all he can think of is Freddie and Effy, Freddie and Effy. He tries for a moment to imagine this _is_ Effy, but his focus shifts to Freddie instead. He thinks about how he's fucking this girl so Freddie can't, so Freddie won't, so Freddie will move on from Effy and be alone like Cook. He forgets, for a few brief blissful minutes, his usual stance that girls are reusable. In this moment, Cherry's all there is, she's the last girl on earth and Freddie's never going to have her.

He comes with that thought, gritting his teeth against her neck, and then he pulls up his jeans and leaves without even looking at her again. 

**

Things are pretty calm for the next month or so. It's actually an otherwise uneventful party the night Freddie attacks him in the loo of a club.

All Cook says is, "Fuck, it hurts to piss these days. Must've picked something up," and Freddie flips out.

He's chosen the urinal that's furthest possible from Cook, so it takes him a moment to actually come up and confront him, but even with the advanced warning (Freddie gets that crazed incredulous look in his eyes) Cook doesn't do a single thing to protect himself. Even though he's got no idea what Freddie's issue is, even though Freddie's shoving him against the wall and then wrestling him to the ground, he doesn't bother to defend himself.

"You fucked her. You must've."

"Who? What?" Cook spits out, and Freddie punches him hard in the ribs, drawing out a wet, broken gasp.

"Girl at the club. Strip club. Stripper. Cherry. She gave us chlamydia."

Cook still does absolutely nothing to get Freddie off of him, just lies there and takes it. He laughs, even, at the realisation that that's who this is about. They went back to the same club a couple of weeks ago because they ran out and started doing the rounds again. Cook was particularly off his head that night, must've missed the part where Freddie got the stripper's number and asked her out for dinner, or whatever it is Freddie does when he wants to fuck someone. And presumably he's recently noticed the painful pissing too and connected the dots.

Cook's laughter seems to spur Freddie on, earns him a brisk punch in the stomach which makes him start coughing and spluttering instead.

"Fuck you," Freddie hisses, makes a noise of disgust. He shifts, half-sprawled across Cook's body, tense and heavy.

Cook spits in his face. "Fuck _you_ , man."

Freddie doesn't bother to wipe it off, lets it slide grotesquely down one cheek and drip off, right back down onto Cook's own face. Cook's hand jerks up instinctively but Freddie grasps both of his wrists tightly. "You fucked her," he whispers, his voice strangely hoarse. "You knew I liked her and you _fucked_ her."

"Who're we talking about, Freds?"

Freddie's expression's not readable, it's some mess of surprise and realisation and anger all at once, but it doesn't matter anyway because at that moment the door squeaks open and JJ comes in, staring down at them anxiously.

"Oh. Oh dear," he says. "That's. Oh. I think we should go home."

**

In the taxi, he sits between them and tries to mediate. He does that thing he used to do when they were little, where he'd pretend to be his own therapist, putting on a silly voice and asking them all the sorts of questions he had to answer three times a week at 4 o'clock.

Eventually they give in and explain the situation.

JJ immediately loses the silly voice. "You're fighting over a stripper who gave you a sexually-transmitted disease," he says simply, and putting it like that seems to help Freddie realise how stupid it is, because they all end up laughing.

The car pulls up outside Freddie's house, and Freddie and Cook both get out. It takes them a few seconds to realise JJ's still in the car, giving the cabbie his own address.

"I'm helping you work it out," he says, grinning triumphantly. "I'm even willing to pay your cab fee for it," he adds as he leans over and slams the door shut.

**

The tension's still thick in the air as Cook and Freddie head inside. They discover no one else is in, so Freddie almost empties the fridge and brings the contents upstairs with them. He dumps it all on his desk and then shuts the door and stands there with his arms crossed, and Cook has the feeling this isn't over. None of it is. And the weird thing is, he doesn't _mind_. He's pumped up and ready this time, ready for the fight he assumes is coming. The pain of Freddie's fist hitting his stomach felt good, but he wants to know how it feels with the roles reversed. He wants to slam Freddie to the floor and hold him down, sit astride him and feel the muscles in Freddie's stomach tense up between his legs. 

Adrenaline crackles into Cook's veins and he revs up, ready for it.

But all Freddie does is speak. "Effy was here just before she disappeared."

"What?"

Freddie unfolds his arms, reaches behind him to clasp the edge of his desk instead and lean against it. The information is blurry in Cook's brain, reality merging with imagination. He thinks about pinning Freddie against the desk, the edge of it digging a deep ridge in his back.

"She was round at mine," Freddie goes on. "We spent the whole day fucking and then she said she was going to go home and have a bath because mine was too rank to consider getting into." He pauses. "And then she went off somewhere abroad with her brother but her Mum won't tell me where."

Cook stares at him. He takes a step forward, but then stops. Winces. The adrenaline bubbles quietly away inside him like lava in a volcano that's not quite ready to erupt.

"When was this?" he demands.

"Couple of days after we got back," Freddie shrugs.

He turns away, getting ready for bed like that's all there is to say. He kicks off his shoes, pulls his shirt over his head and tosses it on the floor. Cook hears the soft clinking of a belt buckle, and he stares fixedly at Freddie's lower back, the indent of his spine and the two little dimples in the smooth skin. The jeans slip down Freddie's legs and Cook's gaze follows them. When Freddie bends to pull off his socks, he juts out his arse, balancing on one foot and then the next, and all Cook does is watch speechlessly.

Freddie turns around. "I don't want you to hate me, I just wanted to say. JJ said I shouldn't because you might actually murder me, or go off the rails anyway when you found out Effy was gone."

There's a long, long pause, during which they only look at one another. Hundreds of things seem to happen outside this bedroom: a police car's siren blares somewhere in the distance as it heads to an accident, girls skitter their way home in high heels, people awaken to the sound of their alarm clocks and dress for work. The sun comes up. Lovers kiss partners good morning, and tiptoe away from one-night stands.

Inside this bedroom, there's only stillness, and silence. And it's that stifling, choking kind of silence, the kind that that slashes up your vocal cords and ties up your tongue. Cook wants to break it, with his fist, but eventually Freddie speaks, voice sounding young and broken.

"I just don't like lying to you."

"Yeah," says Cook quietly. "No, I get that."

He doesn't like this. He can't stand this quiet, the feeling of the calm before the storm. He prefers it when the storm's raging all around him, wild and crazy and breaking everything to pieces. That's when he feels secure. Especially with Freddie. It's how they've always been. On the fringes of being nothing at all, held together by unfinished business.

So he lunges forward, 'cause there's only two things in this world that he can do: he can fuck and he can fight. His fist curls, flies up, but it's like he's moving in slow motion and his knuckles just graze Freddie's cheek. Freddie stands there like a fucking statue and it feels like all of Cook's organs are twisting inside him, frustrated and anticipating.

Part of him—the part he's used to—wants to beat Freddie to a pulp. But the emotional part of him—this burgeoning swell of irrationality that's been growing inside of him, all year long—wants to feel that curve of Freddie's lips against his own again, wants to hold him close and tell him never to let go. 

Freddie takes one slow, careful step back. And then he hooks his thumbs into the waistband of his boxers, pulls them down his legs and throws himself down onto his bed face-first. He presses himself against the mattress and then raises himself up, resting on his forearms and his knees. He rests his head against his hands, and thrusts his arse upwards like a whore, naked and exposed. His body asks for it, _begs_ for it, but he says nothing.

Cook says, "I don't want to fuck you," and the way his voice wavers surprises him, just a little.

"No," Freddie says, and though he sounded coherent earlier, this word is slurred. He rolls over, stretches out, movements fluid and unembarrassed. He's drunker than Cook realised. "That's what this is about. I know it. I—I figured it out."

"You didn't figure _shit_ out," Cook spits. 

He stares down at Freddie's dick, unable to stop himself. It rests soft and dark against his left thigh. Cook's fists clench and unclench, his own cock hardening uncomfortably in his trousers. He grunts, and yanks his t-shirt up over his head suddenly. It's honestly more an angry gesture than anything else—everything feels too hot and close and claustrophobic. He pulls the shirt between his hands, wrings it and then flings it down on the floor. 

Freddie rolls over onto his side, curls in on himself slightly. Cook won't look at his face too closely, but he seems almost frightened, ashamed. Freddie presses his face against the bed, slowly pulling the duvet up against him in a hesitant attempt to cover himself.

"I just—" Cook blurts out. "Look, _stop it_ , all right? _Jesus._ " He swipes his hand across the sweat gathering on his forehead. "You can't call me gay and then just—"

"What?" Freddie throws the duvet back and sits up, dumbfounded. "I'm not _calling you gay_ , I—are you _trying_ to miss the point, or—"

"What's the point, then? What? Share your fuckin' wisdom. You want me to fuck you, is that it? You're jealous of all the girls I've done?" He's fussing with the fastenings of his trousers as he's talking, the button clinking and zipper snarling in his hurry. His dick aches, thick and leaking, and the cool air against his hot, sticky skin is a sharp shock.

"Because it has to be me, doesn't it?" Freddie bites back. "It has to be me so it's all my fault, so none of it's coming from you, so—"

He's talking so fast that Cook barely takes the rest in. In rising fury and panic Cook grabs at his shoes and socks with his trousers round his ankles, kicks everything off hastily, stumbling and grabbing hold of the bed for support. The world seems to swing on its hinges around him.

He struggles his way onto the bed, upright on his knees with his back straight, stocky and confident. Freddie stops mid-sentence. Cook's dick bobs against his stomach, stiff and wet, and Freddie's eyes flicker to it. He swallows, starts to lick his dry lips instinctively and then stops himself. Something throbs painfully in the pit of Cook's stomach and then explodes, energy bursting out of every pore. He shoves at Freddie's shoulders, pushes him down easily. He clambers on top of him, his cock nudging against Freddie's thighs, smearing them with precome before he pulls the legs apart roughly. 

He settles himself, shoving Freddie's legs up alongside his torso, pinning them to his chest and then stopping abruptly, his breathing heavy and loud in the quiet bedroom. He stares down at the crease between Freddie's thighs, aligns his dick with it and hears Freddie's sharp intake of breath in response. He's fucked girls in the arse before, goaded them into it, told them everyone does it and just doesn't talk about it. It was never unplanned, though—the girls always had lube and were a lot cleaner and more hairless than Freddie, and—

"C—Cook," Freddie breathes sort of brokenly.

Cook doesn't look at him, keeps his eyes cast low. He rubs his cock against the narrow crevice, lets it drag down to Freddie's balls, the sac heavier now, fuller. Freddie makes a strained sound, his growing erection trapped painfully between thigh and stomach, Cook still holding him firmly in place. His fingers are starting to ache from the grip, nails pressing into skin. Fixated, he lets his dick drop lower, lets the flushed head jab forwards. 

Freddie's body jolts. "Cook," he warns, voice sounding stronger now. 

Cook forces his eyes upwards, follows the awkward path of Freddie's legs, body folded in two. He sees Freddie's face peering out, eyes wild and nervous.

"Cook," Freddie says again, like he's trying to bring him out of a trance. "Fuck. Cook. Don't."

He reaches round, and Cook feels a hand close over one of his own on Freddie's thigh, easing him off. He lets go, and Freddie's legs fall open around him. Cook sees Freddie's half-hard dick, curving against his smooth belly, and he sinks down, head resting beside it. His breath ghosts over Freddie's skin and he inhales shakily, nose and mouth filled with a musky scent. Their surroundings seem surreal, turned upside-down, and time seems to slow. He doesn't know what he's doing, doesn't even know what he _wants_ to do.

Freddie's hand brushes his shoulder and he pulls himself upwards slowly. He moves against Freddie the way water displaces alongside a body in a bath, and finds himself curled against him, front to back. He wraps his arms tightly around Freddie, draws him closer, buries his face in the nook between neck and shoulder. He curls in so their bodies slot together tightly, side by side, skin to skin. 

It's just a hug; a tight, fierce, and desperate hug. It doesn't feel as sexual as maybe it should, until Cook stops focusing on that stinging feeling in his sinuses and starts to acknowledge the sweaty heat of Freddie's skin against his, the anxious beating of his heart against the plane of Freddie's back. His cock is nestled at the small of Freddie's back, and when the awareness of that really hits him, Cook holds Freddie tighter, blood surging between his legs with renewed vigour.

He brings one hand to his mouth to spit in his palm before sliding it down between their bodies, curling it around his dick as it presses hot and hard against Freddie's back. Freddie's breathing is harsh and guttural so close to his ears, and he shifts on the bed, palming his cock clumsily, arm bumping up against Freddie's back. He gives up, hand sliding around onto Freddie's chest once again, one fingertip against a nipple. As his hips shift and he pulls Freddie close, his erection slips up between the cheeks of Freddie's arse, and he bucks forward involuntarily in response to the friction, pushing and sliding against that crack.

"Fuck," Freddie hisses, the word drawn out.

Cook hooks his chin over Freddie's shoulder, gaze lowered to see Freddie taking his own cock in hand. Freddie's fist is tight, pulling up the shaft and covering it from view. But as Cook rocks against him, slicking a smooth, tight path against Freddie's arse, the darkened head of Freddie's cock pushes through his clenched hand. Freddie hisses again, wordless this time, and Cook looks at him, sidelong, sees his eyes shut tight and his mouth wide and wet. He grinds into Freddie's back, watching Freddie fuck his own fist in a clumsy rhythm. Cook's teeth graze against his own lips, almost gnawing, his hips bucking back and forth and up and down, rutting frantically. 

Freddie's free hand stops clutching at Cook's forearm and clutches at a pillow instead. He drags it down from the head of the bed and grips it tightly, even shoving it against his mouth as he groans, embarrassed. Cook holds him, pressing his own mouth to Freddie's shoulderblade, panting against sweaty skin. His balls go taut and he bites down suddenly into Freddie's skin, hardly listening to the stifled cry. His hips work desperately, violently, and then his body tenses as he streaks wet and white across the clear plane of Freddie's back.

"Shit," he breathes, mouthing the word into Freddie's skin.

He shudders, an aftershock coursing through him, and his dick twitches in his limp hand. He can hear Freddie still slickly jerking his own cock and he wants to _watch_ , wants to see—again—what Freddie looks like when he comes. He remembers how he tried not to look at Freddie's face, that night in the shed, how he tried not to look at Freddie's _anything_ , just focused on getting him off as quickly as possible and hoping they'd never speak of it again.

But he couldn't help being transfixed when Freddie got there. He knew Freddie was close, because he started fucking up Cook's rhythm, hips thrusting clumsily to meet the hand wrapped around him. And then his breath caught in his throat and he let out this raw, weak gasp, and Cook just stared at him in amazement. His face was only dimly visible in the moonlight that seeped through the shed's windows, making everything shadowy and dreamlike. Cook watched his eyelashes flutter, his Adam's apple quiver, and he drew the rest of Freddie's orgasm from him with a determined fist, feeling the heat dripping down over his fingers.

He hadn't ever seen anybody come before, not in real life.

Freddie's arm suddenly darts back behind him, twisting to clutch at Cook's waist, pulling him in closer, skin pressed to sticky skin. 

"I'm—fuck—I'm—" Freddie stammers, and Cook curls a dirty hand over his hip, encouraging. He brings it lower, brushing Freddie's own frantic hand and the rigid heat of his dick beneath it. He feels the tension in Freddie's balls, massaging them in the palm of his hand like he knows what he's doing, doing anything he can to bring Freddie closer.

Suddenly Freddie makes a hard 'C—' sound in his throat but can't get the word out, and he twists his head back, looking Cook right in the eyes. They both buck forwards with such force that the kiss hurts, but Cook finds himself thinking distantly that kissing Freddie always hurts, in one way or another.

In the end, when Freddie comes, Cook is too busy kissing him to be all that aware. He's got his hand up on Freddie's face now, fingers splayed across cheekbone and ear. He only notices that Freddie gasps sharply into his mouth and then goes limp against him. But it's only for a second and then he keeps kissing him, sloppily, breathing heavily. Cook lets go and starts to pull back, to give Freddie a chance to catch his breath, but Freddie rolls over and grabs him by the face, both of his hot, slick, bitter-smelling hands on Cook's cheeks and their lips pressed together once again.

"Just don't talk, alright," Cook hisses against Freddie's lips, staring into the blurred darkness of Freddie's eyes so close. "I don't want to talk about it."

Freddie bites his lip and nods, then nods again with more certainty. His face drifts in and out of focus. Freddie takes his clammy hands off Cook's face and wipes them on the duvet, and Cook's last thought before he falls asleep is that a shower would feel pretty fucking fantastic right about now.

**

Cook wakes up at quarter past four in the afternoon with a pounding headache, and Freddie's bedsheets stuck to his stomach with dried come. He grimaces, shoving groggily at all the fabric that's covering him or sticking to him, only to reveal a completely naked Freddie lying beside him. Last night's events come back to him in a sort of slow dribble and he groans. The sheets are stuck to his face, too. He stumbles out of bed and tries to find his boxers.

He finds a pair on the floor and doesn't remember that he wasn't actually wearing any yesterday until they're already on. On Freddie's desk, he spots a half-empty bottle of white wine—one of the many things they brought up from the fridge earlier—and he takes a long swig. He's always found the best cure for a hangover is more alcohol, even if it's lukewarm chardonnay.

He leans against the desk and looks at the bed, looks at Freddie lying haphazardly on it, pillows thrown about randomly and the duvet strewn across the floor. He's seen this sort of scene many times, behaved as he's behaving now, slipping out of bed and getting ready to leave. But he's not looking at some random girl in an unfamiliar room, he's looking at _Freddie_ , in a bedroom he's known since childhood.

He starts to feel a wave of nausea wash over him and he guzzles down some more wine in attempt to quell it. It doesn't really help. He fumbles to get the duvet covering Freddie again without waking him up, and that seems to help a little.

But then Freddie's eyes flicker open, looking at him in confusion and then realisation, and he winces, rolling over and burying his head in his pillow.

Cook looks at the door, looks back at Freddie, looks at the door one last time and heaves a sigh. He goes over to the side of the bed, nudges Freddie with his knee and proffers the wine bottle.

Freddie winces again, but hoists himself up and takes it, swilling it down and spilling quite a bit on the sheets. He wipes his mouth with the palm of his hand, then gags and takes another swig of the wine instead.

"So," he says after an extremely awkward silence. "You haven't left."

"No," agrees Cook.

"I thought you would."

"Oh."

Another long silence. Cook walks back around to the other side of the bed and climbs back on. They pass the bottle back and forth until it's empty, and then Freddie lets it drop onto the messy floor.

He clears his throat. "So you're not going to go out and find some girl to fuck right away?"

Cook raises his eyebrows. "No..." He shrugs. "Don't want to spread the chlamydia, do I, mate? Best keep that kind of thing between friends."

Freddie snorts, but Cook can tell he's making a mental note to get in touch with a doctor as soon as possible. "So you're not going to go out and pick up another stripper or a prostitute—"

"No, look, what's your deal?" Cook snaps. His mind is a mess right now but Freddie's turning all of his confusion to anger. "Jesus. Do you want me to, is that it? Let's do that, shall we? Let's forget this ever happened, let's forget whatever happened last night to make me wake up this morning with your fuckin' nasty spunk all over my face, shall we?"

Freddie gapes at him, stammers something and then shuts up, speechless.

"Yeah, no, let's do that. I'll go out and stick my diseased dick in some random slappers, shall I? And you can lie here and sulk until Effy comes back, and then you can stick _your_ diseased dick in _her_ , and we can all have a fucking _lovely_ time of it, yeah?" He wipes his face agitatedly, can smell the clinging sour scent on his skin, mixing with his own sweat. "Let's get on with that then," he continues, voice raised even louder now. "Fuck you."

He starts to get up off the bed but Freddie suddenly grabs him by the wrist, and he loses it, snatching himself free from Freddie's grip and punching him hard in the face. For a moment he's stunned, staring as Freddie clutches at his cheekbone, groaning in pain.

But then the anger surges through him again and he dives on top of Freddie, aims for the same spot and gets Freddie's hand, their knuckles colliding and hurting like hell. Freddie grabs hold of him, and they wrestle, rolling over and over on the bed, thrashing and kicking ineffectively. The duvet gets caught between their bodies and then slides onto the floor, and Cook's got Freddie in a headlock when he feels Freddie's cock getting hard against him. He swears, tightening his grip, and Freddie punches at his thigh and manages to pull free, shoving him off.

Cook's hand darts out and he grabs Freddie's hard-on, securing his fingers around the base firmly, stopping Freddie from moving.

"This is what you want, yeah?" he spits out, tugging roughly, and Freddie jerks forwards towards him, frowning with his eyes shut tight and saying nothing.

Cook licks his hand and starts to wank Freddie off with it, awed by the feel of him even through his anger. He struggles to sit up and then clambers on top of him, straddling his thighs. He twists his hand round Freddie's cock, staring down at it, fist moving faster and faster until it's a blur around the stiff flesh.

"Don't tell me," he leans down to hiss in Freddie's ear, "what you think I'm gonna do. Don't fucking tell me."

Freddie looks at him. "Truth hurts," he gasps out just as he comes, splashing both of their stomachs.

In a flurry of movement, Cook instantly slides up Freddie's body, pinning Freddie's head between his knees. He grits his teeth, his blood boiling. He sits firmly on Freddie's chest, and pins his arms to the bed. For a moment Freddie squirms, weak and breathless from orgasm, and then he goes still, staring up at Cook, forcing Cook to look him in the eyes. Cook does, and Freddie lifts his head up as best he can, pressing his mouth to Cook's crotch, lips mouthing through the cotton.

"I'm sorry," he says quietly, voice muffled against the fabric. "I'm sorry. Just stop."

He stares up at him with pleading dark eyes and his mouth moves again, half-kissing Cook's dick through the boxers, and Cook feels a twinge of arousal. Freddie keeps going, mouth warm, boxers clinging damply to Cook's skin. He's hard in seconds.

"Fuck you," he whispers. 

He lets go of Freddie's wrists, wipes the back of his hand across his forehead. Freddie just nods, staring up at him fixedly, lips working at the slit in the boxers, brushing wetly against Cook's bare shaft.

Cook places a shaky hand on Freddie's forehead and pushes him back, sliding off him and slumping on the bed with his head against the wall. "Fuck you," he chokes out weakly again. " _Fuck_ you."

A pause, and then Freddie says his name.

"Cook. _Cook._ " His voice is soft but urgent, and he tentatively strokes at his shoulder, his bicep. "Shh. It's okay."

Cook wants to shake him off—or, knows he _should_ want to shake him off—but he likes the feel of it, finds it soothing. He doesn't like to crumble in front of others, like to keep his guard up and his image strong, but this is his best friend, and besides, it seems like it's too late.

"Just stop," Freddie says, again. He leans in, gently kisses Cook's shoulder. Cook feels him grin as he says, "What do I have to do to get you to stop?"

Cook laughs a bit in spite of himself, but his laughter dies down fast. He picks at his own fingernails. "Stop what?" he can't resist asking, finally.

"Whatever you're doing," Freddie says. "Whatever you're doing that's making you crazy. You can stop. It's okay, 'cause I..."

He trails off, and then pulls back a little, and the unfinished sentence seems to hang in the air. Cook wonders if he was going to say 'I love you', and kind of understands, given their current situation, why he changed his mind. But he wonders why Freddie never seems to say it, never really has.

"I just..." Freddie laughs, trying to break the tension. "Just...I. Me. You know?"

Cook snorts, getting up. He can't stand this sort of conversation, wants to change the subject. "Yeah. All right. So you do want to go out later or what?" He remembers something suddenly. "Did I mention Emily and Naomi said something about a rave next week? Night before college starts again, I think. We're going, right?"

Freddie raises his eyebrows at him, and then shrugs. "Yeah. Sure. Just, no drama, okay?" he laughs. "Promise me you won't end up killing anyone. Especially me."

"Hand on my heart, mate," Cook says, placing his palm firmly over his dick. (Which is no longer standing to attention, as emotional conversation is one of the few things Cook considers a boner-killer.)

Freddie laughs, and then they grin at each other for a while, and Cook can't decide whether or not it'd be a good idea to get back into bed, but then the sound of keys in the front door downstairs solve that decision for him fairly quickly. Without a word, they're pulling on clothes and stripping off bedsheets at lightning speed. 

Not long later, Cook stands at the front door with a chunk of slightly warm cheese in one hand and a sausage in the other, fridge remnants found on Freddie's desk that Cook is calling breakfast. Or dinner.

"See you tonight then, yeah?" he says, taking a bite out of each. "And tomorrow night at Naomi's. And next week for the rave."

Freddie nods. "Yeah. Right," he calls as Cook heads out. "No killing, remember? And try not to think with your dick."

"I can't promise that, mate, that's asking the impossible," Cook yells back.

It pretty much is, but if he's honest, he's not feeling much of an urge to pick up a girl tonight. Sure, he doesn't want to spread anything, but even if he was all clear down there he wouldn't be feeling the need to jump into bed with the next girl he sees. And that's new. He's had that need since he was twelve, a need to prove himself, fucking and fighting for years in order to do it.

It's not like it's easy now, not like he knows how he's feeling and what any of it means, but without Effy around he feels like he's got more of a chance. He feels calm, and for once, he doesn't mind. 

Maybe the storm is on its way, but so what, maybe this time he'll be ready for it.


End file.
